Join us for Live Keynote Coverage Tuesday

Just a quick reminder we will once again have live video analysis / coverage of the Macworld keynote beginning at 11:30 AM ET / 8:30 AM PT on Tuesday. No, we won't have the keynote itself, although we will continue to urge Apple to make a feed of the keynote available.

Adam Ford and I will offer our insights on the announcements in real time, and you'll be able to chat with us via iChat (tdllive) or Twitter (tdllive). Additionally, all viewers can chat via the on-screen chatroom during the event.

Frankly, we're going to miss these keynote webcasts. Last year's was our first big live event and brought our second highest live audience to date (WWDC was #1).

So be sure to join us. Open a tab for our webcast, and check out the rumor sites at the same time. Oh, and be sure to say Hi. Again, put it on those iCals: Live coverage begins 11:30 AM ET / 8:30 AM PT on January 6th.

(Image: ZDNet)

Our Pre-Macworld Root Access Special

Okay, so maybe Macworld fever isn't quite as high as it's been in previous years. Still, this IS the event of the year for the Mac faithful. And also, it's a good time for a reminder that we'll have live video coverage of the Macworld 2009 keynote beginning at 11:30AM ET on Tuesday, January 6th.

At any rate, our in-house genius recently stopped by for a special pre-Macworld edition of Root Access. In part one, we tackle the controversy surrounding Apple's decision to leave Macworld. Part Two is a look at what's fair, and what isn't when it comes to Steve Jobs' health. And in part three, we get down to the nuts and bolts of looking at this year's rumors before the big event.

Part One.

Part Two

Part Three

TDL Live This Week: 12/8-12/15

In case you missed it live, here's a look at our weekly roundup of Apple news, presented, as always, in a serious fashion:

Apple deletes Mac antivirus suggestion

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10111958-83.html?tag=mncol;txt

Apple removed an old item from its support site late Tuesday that urged Mac customers to use multiple antivirus utilities and now says the Mac is safe "out of the box."
"We have removed the KnowledgeBase article because it was old and inaccurate," Apple spokesperson Bill Evans said.
"The Mac is designed with built-in technologies that provide protection against malicious software and security threats right out of the box," he said. "However, since no system can be 100 percent immune from every threat, running antivirus software may offer additional protection."
Apple's previous security message in its KnowledgeBase, which serves as a tutorial for Mac users, was: "Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult."
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Confirmed: iPhone Coming to Walmart By the End of December, Regularly Priced
http://gizmodo.com/5103986/confirmed-iphone-coming-to-walmart-by-the-end-of-december-regularly-priced
Store representatives at multiple locations confirmed to the publication that employees are training to sell the handset, which will hit shelves by the end of the month. This will make Walmart the second non-mothership retail chain to sell the iPhone, and by far the largest. But what about all the $99 4GB model nonsense? It hasn't been confirmed, and still doesn't sound that likely.

Some analysts still say that the $99 iPhone will probably happen eventually, but others are specific enough to claim that a Bentonville, Arkansas location will sell the discontinued 4GB model in addition to the 8GB and 16GB versions, which have been confirmed at their normal $199 and $299 prices.

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Google Earth Browser Plugin for Mac OS X

http://db.tidbits.com/article/9918?rss

Mac users now have access to the Google Earth Browser Plugin. Some Mac users have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the plug-in since it was introduced for Windows in May 2008 and for the iPhone in October 2008. The plug-in is compatible with both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs, and works in both Safari 3.1 and later and Firefox 3.0 and later.

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Microsoft to release 'Softwear' retro clothing line

http://www.macworld.com/article/137391/2008/12/microsoft_softwear.html?lsrc=rss_main

Microsoft says it’s a “clothing line that taps the nostalgia of when PCs were just starting to change our lives,” and that it aims to “showcase the DOS days of the software company that now connects over a billion people.”

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Argentina-based OpeniMac now selling Mac clones

http://www.macworld.com/article/137388/2008/12/openimac.html?lsrc=rss_weblogs_macuser

Mmeet Argentina-based OpeniMacwho, besides clearly angling for a trademark lawsuit, is also going ahead and selling Mac OS X-based computers at prices that undercut Apple's own offerings.
Well, in Argentina, anyway, as the country doesn't have its own Apple Store, online or brick-and-mortar. But if you live in the U.S., the prices aren't really cheaper than buying a comparable Mac.
The company bills its product line with the tag “Benefits of a Mac. Price of a PC.” Two models are available: the "OpeniMac" is a $990 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo machine that also sports 2GB of memory, a 320GB SATA drive, SuperDrive, ATI Radeon HD PRO, and even a 6-in-1 memory card reader.
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Apple was 5th busiest retail site on Cyber Monday

http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/12/07/apple-was-5th-busiest-retail-site-on-cyber-monday/

While its competitors were offering deep discounts to pull in recession-battered customers, Apple (AAPL) had already ended its Black Friday sale and by Monday was back to charging its usual premium prices for laptops, desktops and MP3 players.
Yet its online store still managed to grab the No. 5 spot in comScore’s ranking of the top 20 most visited retail sites on Monday Dec. 1, handily beating not only Dell (DELL) and Hewlett Packard (HPQ), but such full-fledged retail outlets as Best Buy (BBY), Toys “R” Us and Circuit City .

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LEARN SPANISH IN ITUNES U

From Portales: beginner’s Spanish to the advanced A Buen Puerto: Fast Forward in Spanish, you’ll find a variety of Spanish course material from the Open University on iTunes U. And once you’re conversant in Spanish, you could sample the German and French language courses, as well.

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Grey Lines Mar MacBook Air Displays

http://db.tidbits.com/article/9910?rss

Some MacBook Air users have been reporting the appearance of grey horizontal lines across the screens of their late 2008 models. Discussion threads on the issue began in early November 2008 on both Apple's discussion forums and the MacRumors forums. There have been slight variations in the description of the issue, but most accounts agree the lines are grey or white, horizontal or slightly angled, granulated or pixelated in appearance, and are very subtle. Overall the lines are said to give the screen the appearance of a piece of parchment or recycled paper. Also, the lines are said to appear at the initial boot; they do not develop over time.

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Rosetta Becomes Optional in Snow Leopard?

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/12/08/latest-mac-os-x-10-5-6-seed;-rosetta-becomes-optional-in-snow-leopard/

Separately, we've heard that the newest version of Snow Leopard makes Rosetta an optional installation. Rosetta is Apple's PowerPC emulator for their Intel Macs, allowing Intel Mac owners to run legacy software that has not been upgraded for the Intel platform. This news comes shortly after an announcement that IBM had purchased Transitive, the company behind Rosetta's technology. The final release of Snow Leopard is also rumored to require an Intel Mac, thereby being the first version of Mac OS X to drop PowerPC support.

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Three Apps Define Apple's Mobile Platform
http://blogs.eweek.com/applewatch/content/app_store/three_apps_define_apples_mobile_platform.html

News Commentary. Last week, Apple announced that the App Store had 300 million downloads and 10,000 applications. Three apps matter more.
It's not so much what they do but what they mean. These three applications define App Store, supported by _oc="null">iPhone and iPod Touch, as an emerging mobile platform. Right now, Apple has created the leading contender to replace the PC as the platform people use most.

The apps:
Amazon Mobile

Google Mobile App

Obama `08

Number of applications does not a successful platform make. Volume is important, but the sticky quality of applications/services and the ability to make real money matter more.
All successful platforms share a few common traits:
They have at least one killer application people really want

They make available a breadth of useful applications

Development tools and APIs make it easy to create good applications

Third parties make lots of money
There is a fifth attribute not common to all successful platforms, but unique to some: They make customer engagement easier, a quality that some connected gaming devices/software and some Web 2.0 platforms imbue.

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Steve Jobs participating in ad song selection
http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/12/08/jobs.picking.ad.songs/
Apple CEO Steve Jobs is himself involved in picking the songs used incompanyadvertising, a musician claims. Lars Iversen, a member of The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, notes that when "Around the Bend" was chosen for an iPod touch TV ad, a company representing the band -- Synch -- first got in touch with Apple, and then participated in a direct meeting with Jobs. The executive is said to have picked the song to use at this meeting, expressing particular enthusiasm for the music.

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HERE WE GO AGAIN... APPLE TABLET IN 2009?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10118470-37.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=News-Apple
Earlier this year CEO Steve Jobs implied Apple was watching small-device categories like tablets and Netbooks to see if they actually take off as a mega-trend, but in the meantime the company had other priorities. Mac tablet rumors stretch back for years, and in the past Jobs has quickly shot down talk of an Apple-produced competitor to Amazon's Kindle, which has been interpreted as a sign Apple was doing just that.

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Adobe and Belkin back out of Macworld, IDG not concerned
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/12/08/adobe-and-belkin-back-out-macworld-idg-not-concerned
IDG World Expo isn't too concerned, or so it claims. A spokesperson issued this statement:

While Adobe has decided to shift its focus at for Macworld this year, the company will still be actively participating in the event -- several members of the company's product team will be involved in Macworld tracks, including a full day of CS4 demo sessions with Adobe evangelists on Wednesday, January 7.

Every year we see a certain percentage of exhibitors pull out of the event for their own business reasons. In this economic climate, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see this. The important thing to understand is that Macworld Conference & Expo 2009 will be similar in size to last year’s event and attendees will continue to visit nearly 500 great Mac product vendors on our exhibit floors.

TDL Live This week: (11/17-11/24)

We understand not everyone can watch TDL Live Monday nights at 9PM ET. So from time to time, we like to get you caught up on what you missed:

Also, straight from our secret vault, here are the show notes and links that made the show possible:

Apple to launch ‘aggressive’ Black Friday sale?
http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=495
As Black Friday sales begin to leak on the Web, experts at Barclays Capital say they expect Apple to counter rival PC vendors’ promotions with a one-day sale more aggressive than usual, offering deep discounts on a number of Mac models.

Low cost notebooks top the list of the most heavily-discounted electronics items poised to dominate this year’s sales, with Dell planning to offer a $299 Linux model via its website

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USB 3.0 full specs promise 10X speed boost
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/11/17/usb.3.final.spec/

The USB 3.0 Promoter Group today revealed the full specifications for its namesake interface standard and so greenlit development of computer platforms and devices using the technology. The new peripheral format will now officially peak at 5Gbps, or about ten times faster than the 2.0 protocol. In actual tests, 25GB of data transfers in nearly 14 minutes over USB 2.0 but just 70 seconds over USB 3.0, significantly outpacing FireWire 800 as well as many hard drives.

FireWire isn't remaining static and should be upgraded to the S3200 standard ahead of USB 3.0 to provide about 3.2Gbps of bandwidth and similar power managementfeatures.

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LEGO Indiana Jones for Mac slated for November 28th
http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/11/17/lego.indy.jones.on.nov.28/
The Mac edition ofLEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures should be released on November 28th, conversion companyFeral Interactive has announced. The game is a port of a title already available for Windows and console systems,

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Eric Wilfrid is the new MacBU GM at Microsoft
http://www.officeformac.com/blog/New-MacBU-GM

Eric is a 14-year veteran of Microsoft's Mac team, having most recently worked as Product Unit Manager of the MacBU Silicon Valley team, based in Mountain View, CA. In that role I managed a team of engineers in developing Office for Mac and other MacBU products.

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Apple quietly discontinues the 23" Cinema Display
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/11/17/apple-quietly-discontinues-the-23-cinema-display
The discontinued status means that Apple is out of stock of the remaining new 23" Cinema Displays, and those waiting patiently to get their hands on the 24" LED Cinema Display have good reason to believe it should be coming any day now.

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Apple set to release Mac OS X 10.5.6 soon
http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/apple_set_to_release_mac_os_x_1056_soon/
The release of Mac OS X 10.5.6 could be just around the corner. The update is slated to deliver wide-ranging fixes to Apple's operating system," Stephen Withers reports for iTWire.

"Developer notes accompanying various seed versions of Mac OS X 10.5.6 have been leaked by Portuguese-language web site hmbt.org. Those purportedly accompanying build 9G38 say there are no known issues with the update," Withers reports. "While that does not guarantee that 10.5.6 will arrive in the next few days, it is a sign that the project is not far from completion unless some significant problems are found in the latest changes."
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iPhone: Has Google lost its voice?
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/11/15/iphone-has-google-lost-its-voice-search/
John Markoff’s story in the New York Timesabout Google (GOOG) bringing voice activation to the iPhone, letting you search for everything from pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge to the length of a giant squid just by talking into your phone.
Google was under the impression that the application would be live on the App Store on Friday (obviously, since they pushed all significant press attention to it). Sometime Friday they found out Apple wouldn’t be pushing it, despite the fact that Google submitted it for review earlier in the week and got a thumbs up for Friday. One source says they’ve had little direct contact with Apple during the review, instead getting their updates via the standard iPhone developer tool, which has said “in review” for the last few days.

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Obama faces BlackBerry and Apple laptop ban

http://apcmag.com/obama_faces_blackberry_and_apple_laptop_ban.htm

His campaign embraced Web 2.0 technologies. He’s promised to appoint a ‘chief technical officer’ for the USA and will broadcast his weekly Address to the Nation via YouTube.

But from the date of his inauguration on January 20th 2008, if not beforehand, President-elect Barrack Obama will have to part with his beloved BlackBerry smartphone and maybe Apple laptop.

Concerns over email security and the need for all presidential correspondence to be entered into an official record, and eventually be open to public perusal, are expected to trump Obama’s own enthusiasm for technology.

It’s a tough break for the Geek-in-Chief, who according to The Telegraph’s list of ‘50 things you might not know about Barack Obama’ admits his ‘worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry’. ).

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Apple flirting with another record quarter for Mac sales

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/11/17/apple_flirting_with_another_record_quarter_for_mac_sales.html

fter spending 25 hours counting sales of iPhones and Macs at Apple's US-based retail chain, investment bank Piper Jaffray said it believes the company this quarter could meet or beat last quarter's record 2.6 million Mac sales total while again selling more than 6 million iPhones.

The firm's checks reveal the Cupertino-based company is selling an average of 28 iPhone 3Gs per day through each of its retail stores, down from 95 units per day in July, immediately following the handset's launch.

While those results would suggest a stark decline in quarterly sales, analyst Gene Munster said expanded international availability, the upcoming holiday shopping season, and the addition of Best Buy as an authorized iPhone reseller in US should combined to offset any slowdown in sales at the company's stores.

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Flash and AIR coming to ARM, but not necessarily iPhone

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/11/17/flash-and-air-coming-to-arm-but-not-necessarily-iphone

At the Adobe 2008 MAX conference today, Adobe announced a partnership to bring Flash 10 and AIR to ARM processors that power, among many other devices, Apple's iPhones. While this marks some progress on answering complaints about poor Flash performance on the device, we don't think it's a good idea to start holding your breath for Flash (or especially AIR) on the iPhone. Yet, anyway.

As you probably remember, Flash hasn't had much luck in its quest for the iTunes App Store. While Adobe has practically begged Apple to allow one of its most profitable products onto the best-selling phone in the US, Steve Jobs ain't havin' it, publicly stating that Flash is too slow on the iPhone and Flash Lite is "not capable of being used with the web.

If you look at Adobe's news, it's really just an announcement of a forthcoming announcement, as Flash 10 and AIR won't arrive until the second half of 2009.

A Huge, Huge Quarter For Apple

Apple has announced it's quarterly earnings. Key takeaways: 6.9 million phones sold, and an all-time high for Mac sales at 2.6 million. Full details can be found here. Don't forget, we'll have our live video analysis show at 6PM ET / 3PM PT. I hope you'll join us, and let us know what you think via iChat or AIM to "tdllive".